This disclosure relates to a reimageable printing member, for example a reimageable printing plate such as a flexographic printing plate, and a method of forming images with such reimageable printing member.
The flexographic printing market is significant. Current examples of printing done by the flexography process include printing decorated toilet tissue, bags, corrugated board and other materials such as foil, cellophane, polyethylene and other plastic films.
In flexography, printing is done by using plates that contain the image to be transferred onto a substrate in the form of raised images upon the plate surface. Specifically, the flexographic plate surface contains a permanently raised image, i.e., a raised reverse image of the image to be formed on the substrate, usable for printing only a single same image on substrates. When a new or different image is needed, a new plate is fabricated and the previously used plate is stored or disposed. High cost associated with plate fabrication, as well as with storage of a large number of plates, requires flexographic printing jobs to be of the order of millions of identical prints per plate in order for the process to be cost effective.